Mary Meeker Talks Twitter, Waze, Venture Capital And More

Mary Meeker has been a venture capitalist for less than two years, but she's been playing an integral role in the Internet Economy from the day she walked in the door at Morgan Stanley in 1991. After a long run as the stock market's most influential Internet analyst, Meeker left Morgan in late 2010 to join Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to run a new $1 billion late-stage tech growth fund for the venture capital giant.

I recently sat down with Meeker at Kleiner's offices on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California, for a wide-ranging talk about her Kleiner years, her experience at Kleiner so far, and the state of the venture capital market. You'll find the details in Q&A below.

Q: Mary, it’s been almost two years since you left Morgan Stanley to join Kleiner Perkins, giving up your gig as an Internet stock analyst for a new role as a VC. How’s it going?

A: In many ways, the two jobs are similar. I’m still looking at technology companies. We’re looking at them early in their life cycle, trying to identify the really interesting ones, and looking at them with a global prism.

Q: How much money are you running?

A: We have a $1 billion fund, and we’ve invested about half of that. About 25% of the capital invested has been outside the U.S. That’s a little different than other Silicon Valley venture firms, but it is consistent with the approach we had at Morgan Stanley.

Q: So you’re not in the school that says your portfolio companies have to be within easy driving distance.

A: Nope. We’ve invested in Waze, a traffic navigation application that has density in Tel Aviv, and has now gone global. Spotify, which was initially only in Sweden, and now they’ve gone global. We’ve invested in the e-commerce 360Buy, which has not gone global, but which certainly is doing a good job in its home market – China.

Q: Before we dig in any further, Mary, how would you sum up your investment approach with your Kleiner fund?

A: Aided and abetted by rapid improvements in mobile devices and networks, entrepreneurs around the world are re-imagining how age-old products and services work. We want to invest in the entrepreneurs that are most passionate and skilled at creating new businesses in the rapidly evolving markets for mobile and social services…and we want to help them achieve their dreams.